Sailing into SeaWorld Orlando

Our little 3-park trip to Orlando actually started here at Sea World Orlando; the park was Sean’s top priority for his first visit to Florida.

We’re awfully fond of our SeaWorld here in Southern California – how would Sea World Parks’ most prominent park compare?

– Over the years, many of our images have popped up on other sites and forums, awesome that our coverage spreads, not so awesome that not everyone mentioned where they got the images from. We are totally fine with our audience using our images, BUT ONLY IF credit is given to californiacoasterkings.com. Thank you!

The day before our actually SeaWorld visit, we hit up the Mellow Mushroom on International Drive for some amazing food and some AMAZING VIEWS!

Mako and Kraken taunt tourists as they pass by on I-Drive.

Mako does an amazing job selling itself. It’s hard to just watch and not ride!

Kraken was once a prominent icon on I-Drive, but the tree line has slowly hidden it from view. And now Mako stands completely in the field of view.

As for the ride itself, I was a huge fan of it based on my September 2016 rides. Sean would soon find out for himself just what a stellar addition Mako is to an already stellar product line.

The drop is strong, the pacing is solid, the airtime is excellent, and the setting is lovely. Mako is what every hyper coaster wants to be.

We’re coming for you tomorrow, fishy!

BAM! It’s now tomorrow and we have arrived! We started with a look at the park’s new Dolphin Nursery.

Apparently, this is a rare sight: The Sky Tower is actually open.

Jounrey to Atlantis, Sea World Orlando’s cardinal coaster, gives a much more entertaining ride than its Californian and Texan siblings. A detailed dark ride sequence starts your journey, followed by a series of drops and other surprises.

Until recently, the ride featured a story of some kind. I’m not sure what it was, but nowadays the scenes are purely decorative. I’m fine with this, as rides that force a story come off as cheesy. A ride like Journey to Atlantis doesn’t need to be anything more than a good-looking ride with a theme of adventure.

The bridge across the park’s lake offers some nice views.

We enjoyed a viewing of Sea World Orlando’s rendition of “One Ocean.” This show was recently replaced with the educational, and superior, demonstration: The Orca Encounter, at our SeaWorld San Diego park.

SeaWorld San Diego has a larger pod of orcas, but Orlando has the better stadium setup.

The orcas here are younger than the ones in San Diego; they’re still getting to know themselves as performers. The smaller size of the younger orcas makes the orcas in San Diego look a lot more impressive when leaping out of the water. That is not to say that these orcas aren’t absolutely beautiful.

The show is well-recieved by audiences here; San Diego’s park long-term success may be in question, but Orlando’s doesn’t seem to show many signs of concern.

We’re still partial to our “One Ocean,” but we love Orlando’s nonetheless.

Take a good look, folks! This Shamu-themed kiddie coaster will have a different look come next year! Shamu’s Happy Harbor/ Sesame Street Bay of Play is by far the least good looking area in the park, but next year that will change!

For lunch we treated ourselves to Sharks Underwater Grill, one of SeaWorld Orlando’s finest dining options.

As you can see, the dining room is situated along quite a large shark tank.

The food was delicious and surprisingly reasonable in price. Here we have artichoke dip:

Garlic mussels:

Caesar Salad:

House salad:

Ahi Tuna:

Grilled Salmon:

After our delicious meal, we visited the seals!

Not to sound conceited, but SeaWorld should 100% make this picture the cover of their next brochure.

On my 2016 visit, I visited the peguins. The trackless dark ride that makes up part of the experience was closed, however.

Sean and I were able to enjoy the dark ride for the first time together. Surprisingly great ride considering I’ve never really heard about it; lots of cool technology at work to create a truly one-of-a-kind experience.

The penguins are yours to enjoy after the ride.

They can get surprisingly close to visitors.

In fact, if they really wanted to, they could jump onto unsuspecting guests.

A beautiful group, really.

Here’s another beautiful group: this time it’s Kraken riders.

We were lucky that Kraken VR had bit the dust before our visit. We’re kind of tired of the VR thing and, by and large, we think it’s run its course. Kraken is a stellar ride and still one of the best of its kind – the last thing it needs is VR to muddle the experience.

Kraken’s mascot used to be a moray eel. I’m not sure why that was ever the case, but as of last year the large eel-shaped rock work has been reimagined as an octopus.

We had a nice visit with the turtles, and really enjoyed their Circlevision-360-style show (at least, until the very end, where it turned into anti-waste propaganda).

We’d planned to see Dolphin Days, but we used our time to eat at Sharks instead. It also gave us time to check out Orlando’s version of Wild Arctic (whose Star Tours-style simulators are severely aged and animal exhibits are severely underpopulated.)

We took a moment to make sure we take those photos of Manta that everyone has.

Check!

I’m a huge fan of Manta (particularly the animal exhibit part), but living next door to Tatsu has certainly jaded me.

Still, Manta is a much better ride than most flying coasters.

Looking forward to riding its twin at Nagashima Spa Land in September!

We ended our day on several Mako rides.

Coaster-wise, this might be as good as it gets here in Orlando. And that’s saying a lot!

Time to call it a night!

Thanks, SeaWorld Orlando, for an amazing day! We can’t wait to come back again and again!